Newsletter Analytics

Interested in the analytics included with your Newsletter subscription? Take a look below to learn more about the metrics included with your Newsletter and what they can tell you:

Sent - The number of recipients who were sent a newsletter

Delivered- The count of recipients who successfully received the newsletter

Delivered rate- The percentage of newsletter recipients who received the newsletter. A delivery rate of less than 100% indicates that some recipients are not being successfully reached. Be sure to check the Blocked and Bounced data tables to see what issues are affecting which recipients.

Opened- The number of recipients who opened the newsletter

Open Rate - The percentage of unique recipients who opened the newsletter

Clicked- The number of recipients who clicked at least one link or article in the newsletter

Click Rate- The percentage of recipients who clicked on a link or article in the newsletter (recipients who clicked an article or link / recipients who were sent the newsletter)

The above screenshot from the Meltwater Newsletter Analytics also includes information about:

Newsletter distribution name

The last person who curated or edited this particular newsletter

A timestamp for when the newsletter was delivered

The last time a recipient opened a newsletter or clicked on an article within the newsletter

Optimizing Metrics

Below is more information on the above metrics, and ideas for optimizing your newsletter. Remember, your newsletter objectives will determine what you optimize.

Open Rates

Your newsletter open rate tells you the number of people who clicked the email and opened it. For some internal newsletters, readers can glean all necessary information from reading what is included in the email -- and you can rely entirely on the open rate to understand message penetration. However, for most communications pros, open rate is one part of the overall newsletter measurement process. Let’s see what open rates tell us.

The email open rate tells you how well your From Name, Subject Line and Preview text resonate with the reader. At this point in the email send process, the reader isn’t familiar with the layout of the email or the content contained within the email, so you can isolate three items to fix. By isolating and experimenting with one of these three items, you can identify what drives your readers to open the email more frequently.

From Name

Try experimenting with sending from a senior leader

Avoid using generic terms like “PR and Communications Team”

Subject Line

Subject lines tell the reader what is in the email. Depending on the culture of your company or your audience, you can be playful or more serious with the subject line. But no matter what, it needs to be informative.

Try experimenting with different lengths and information

The more specific the better: “Internal newsletter 46” is less informational than “Industry news:How Trade talks impact your work”

Summary Header

This is the text that is visible within email clients. This text doesn’t necessarily exist within thenewsletter body -- but can be used to tease the reader to open the email.

Click and Click Rates

Once you feel okay with the number of people opening your emails, your next step is to optimize the body content so that people click on your articles. There are a few things to test and optimize:

Article Titles

For media coverage across multiple publications, try different publications and titles

Additional Insights

The type of commentary you include can be altered to encourage more clicks. Add comments toarticles to draw people in and pique interest.

The type of Content

The type of content in your newsletter might entice more clicks.

Delivery Rate

Delivery rates tell you information on the quality of your email list. If you are using the same email list as you did a year ago, you are likely experiencing a low delivery rate as employees leave, or change email addresses due to name changes. And more importantly, you are likely ignoring all the new employee additions.

Available to you is a list of all of the recipients who bounced (invalid email address) in addition to the email address that were blocked by the email provider. If you see a delivery rate that is less than 100% it is often worthwhile checking out the Bounced and Blocked addresses, which you can examine via the Sent / Blocked / Bounced menu. Email addresses that were blocked indicate that delivery to that email address was not even attempted. This is commonly the result of a recipient unsubscribing or an email service configuration that prevents delivery. While, email addresses that were bounced indicate that delivery was attempted but unsuccessful.

In summary

Data and insights into your newsletter is only helpful if you know how to act on thedata. Many of the ideas laid out in this white paper are intuitive once you’ve framedyour newsletter objectives. Before jumping into these metrics, define and articulate yourobjectives.

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